


Nothing So Holy

by WarriorOmen



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Historical, Light Angst (Brief), M/M, Poetry, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie, Religious Symbolism, early years, flowery language, historical setting, reflections, some religious talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28298940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarriorOmen/pseuds/WarriorOmen
Summary: Moments in time. Thoughts, reflections, memories. And how they came to be.----Yusuf and Nicolò chatting by a fire.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 18
Kudos: 70





	Nothing So Holy

**Author's Note:**

> I will never not be terrible at summaries. I am sorry. Just some quiet fireside tenderness.

When Nicolò was 13, he fell ill with one of the many invariable illnesses that in such times simply existed under the ever-arching title of ‘fever’.

He’d been recounting it to Yusuf, one night, while they sat braced by a fire, a ship was leaving port the next morning and they’d chosen to stay awake to avoiding missing the early docking.

“I remember something of that.” Yusuf said, “I may have been younger, however. Six, perhaps? At times, I would feel such pain in my throat, and cough and cry, and fall asleep. If I woke up, there’d be coolness from a cup.”

Nicolò hummed, thoughtful. “I would feel sweat in my hair, and my pillow was always damp. I’d shake by the fire and sweat and there’d be shapes dancing in my eyes.”

“I thought.” Nicolò continued, “That maybe I saw angels. That maybe there’d be wings by the window. But it’d be so fragmented. I’d blink and miss it.”

“My grandfather.” Yusuf said, “He’d come by and read to me. I remember thinking about how impossibly old he seemed. His hair was all white, and it looked sharp against his skin. A beard that was all wiry and once I thought it’d be fun to decorate. He’d carry us children high, until his back ached, but we’d never be told of it. He’d only set us down, distract us with some toy or other, to find a way to sit himself and soothe.”

Nicolò’s face had gone soft and fond in the firelight, Yusuf could see the way the flames framed his face, cast shadows over the strong nose he’d come to love so. Maybe to a passerby, he’d look a figure of a story, something so normal, yet so incapable of being pinned down by anything that existed upon this earth.

“Men so powerful, but so kind.” Nicolò hummed, “My grandfathers were both passed by my birth.” Furrowing his brow, “But my father, he seemed something of that sort. It only occurred to me as I grew that this figure who’d seemed so massive my entire life was but slighter than I believed, and that his hair was streaked and thinning faster than I realized.”

“You feel safe.” Yusuf considered, “Nothing can touch you.”

“And if anything should pass them, our mothers were waiting.”

Yusuf laughed, “Ah, and hath no fury one that touches the bosom offspring.”

“Never wish it.” Nicolò agreed, leaning into him, braced up along Yusuf's shoulder. “The fever passed, and I finished schooling the year beyond that, which came the talks.”

Yusuf didn’t have to ask; they’d had such a conversation many a time before.

_“He had gold hair with red streaks.” Nicolò told him back then. “If the sun caught it, it’d glow like a halo, or what I thought a halo was in a manifestation.”_

_“Large curls, that went for miles when I could see them.” Yusuf had told him in return, “He could jump horses and craft, throw a spear and climb over walls. I thought him the largest man my age, he liked the night and travelled with baskets.”_

_“I’d swim” Nicolò said, laughing into Yusuf’s stomach where he’d somehow migrated at the time. “I thought, if I swam, the burning in my head would cease and maybe if I came back out of the water, I’d be more receptable to the suggestions passed along by my mother. “Oh, but what of that lovely daughter of the road beyond our house? Maybe give a request calling to the young lady of the landowners.”_

_“It never did.” Yusuf pondered, knowing the obvious._

_“Of nothing. Sometimes brace on the rocks and sand, shaking water from my hair feeling more burned than before.”_

_“But what a lovely burn.” Yusuf sighed, “When it could be found.” Telling Nicolò of what the first of his own had been like. “Everything smelled so sweet, if for a moment.” And only a moment, before skin and sweat overpowered even the sweetest oil._

_“Everything was dark, so dark.” Nicolò recounted, thinking of red-gold hair briefly, momentarily enough for the memory. “Almost fumbling, even with one’s eyes adjusted.”_

“Never would have been.” Yusuf says, staring off into the flames. Where they lapped at his legs, crawling patterns up his chest, Nicolò wondered if there’d ever been anything so passionately beautiful in the world that could have existed before.

Early, Nicolò had been intensely drawn forth with every bit of Yusuf his eyes and mind could take in. Every touch, every knot of skin and pull of hair. Every coil of the beard that covered his chin and face, snug under the nose. Touching for hours when time allowed and the briefest passes when there was not.

“I committee you to memory, over and over and there will always be something new to the day and night that brings something new. Overwriting what I think I believe. The only distress is I cannot fathom how to tally it all.”

“Try not, then.” Yusuf assured, shuffling his, “That has been my solution. What I cannot retain in the material I commit to paper.”

“We will lose those diaries.” Nicolò worried, “On our endless travels.”

Yusuf turned his head, fingers to his cheek, “Not for now.” He promised, drawing him in, Nicolò immediately filling the created space. “In time, we create a place.”

“A permanent place.” Nicolò near whispered, as if fathoming it was too tenuous.

“Yes.” Yusuf promised, and oh how sweet his lips always tasted, how sweet now still fresh from the fruit they’d been able to have over dinner. Something not quite sour, but lingering, permeating when Nicolò drew him closer, lapping at the taste over the sweet skin.

“There it is.” Yusuf murmured, soft, near muffled by the kiss Nicolò refused to break.

“What?” Nicolò asked, low, sedate.

“That hum you make when I kiss you. I feel how your entire chest undulates with it. How it forwards itself to me through your breath.”

“Ah,” Nicolò did so again, near subconsciously. “Like your growl.”

“As you love it so.” Yusuf murmured, “How you coax it free so effortlessly.”

Nicolò shifted, so easily, ever so easily, the fire near obscured by the tantalizingly wide expanse of Nicolò’s shoulders, his chest, hair unbound and hanging to the shoulders. So beautiful.

“Like this?” He asked, lowering his head, hands down around Yusuf’s neck, fingers wide, splayed, cradling it in its entirety, and when his teeth found the lobe of Yusuf’s ear, his chest rumbled.

It was not conscious thought, his body responded to the touch he loved so well without his brain agreeing. Not that he ever sought to argue it. Never, not that. Not when the teeth enclosed slightly tighter; scraped.

“Nicolò.”

“Yes, my name never sounds so sweet as it does on your lips.”

“Nicolò.” Again, because he could feel him shivering, could feel it in the tension coiling in Nicolò’s thighs, “Nico.”

“Yes.” The nickname only Yusuf had for him.

“When I’d pray.” Nicolò said, his words sharp and sure, even as his slow-moving hips threatened to close any sensibility from Yusuf to think or focus, “I could never imagine what I might be asking for, praying too. They told us, over and over, ‘To He Above’. Something we mere humans were not supposed to be able to conceptualize. But to know. ‘Trust in He’. Trust in nothing you can see, but something you can fathom.”

“You can’t see love.” Yusuf almost argued, brain well and truly addled. Nicolò’s hands had moved beyond his cloth, hands working their welcome migration over his chest, “So..” Nicolò’s hands were distracting, deep beneath fine hair and pressed to skin, “They try to say.”

“We can see love.” Nicolò argued, instantly. “In us, in our words. Our expressions. Of dedications. Are the flowers in the garden not love? Is the touch of a parent to a child, where for a moment, the world fades away not love? Is the axe in hand of the man who cuts down the tree for the wood of warmth not love?”

“I never agreed with it.” Yusuf hummed, or he thinks he hummed. It was hard to say, and with Nicolò’s fingers tightening against his chest, his shoulders, he couldn’t care.

“I know.” Nicolò smiled, head bending lower, oh it felt so sweet to Yusuf’s own. He could smell the sweet-perfumed herbs that dotted his skin. Sat beneath their clothes. Gave him such a beautiful scent, mingled perfectly with the pure, unadulterated scent of Nicolò. The one he breathed in every morning, the one that was the first thing that hit his brain before coming to his groggy consciousness.

“Radiant.” Nicolò hummed, face having migrated once more, nose to his neck, just beneath his beard. When his lips closed about Yusuf’s Adam’s Apple, he growled with abandon, near rocking off the ground in desperation.

He felt the smirk, the moan to his neck, the tongue against his jugular.

“Nico, please.”

“So intoxicating.” Nicolò moaned, and there was a definite lapping to Yusuf’s neck now, it sent heat to every particle and pore of his skin, to his veins and to the solid core of his soul where Nicolò lived and breathed within him.

From behind himself, behind them both, the fire crackled, spark, filled the small home. Far off, they could hear the waves.

Morning would be there soon, the window behind Yusuf had the sky lightening slowly far off.

“You’ll need to bind your hair.” Yusuf whispered, distracted, Nicolò’s mouth working it’s journey back up. Bliss. His tongue found Yusuf’s and they drew out the languid, slow kiss, Yusuf’s fingers splayed along Nicolò’s bare lower back, covered by the tunic he’d slipped them beneath.

Overheated. Too close to that fire.

Yusuf’s brow furrowed and Nicolò felt it with the change in the kiss, and he turned them slowly, insistently, until Nicolò was flat to his back, Yusuf atop him, starring down into eyes with colour he could barely make out distinctly, so blown were the pupils.

“Yusuf?”

“Your skin.” He protested, “Your back was aflame, you never said of it.”

“Always looking out for me, like I could ever focus upon anything with you.”

“Such wine that drips from those lips.” Yusuf huffed, endeared beyond all belief.

“Could be of it. Had we any.”

“Long drunk.” Yusuf lamented, “And the ship’s bound to have none.”

“A tragedy the world has never known,” Nicolò teased. Beyond Yusuf’s shoulder, he could see their weapons. The long-curved blade of the beloved scimitar illuminated in casual flame flicks. His own sword laying beyond, both freshly oiled and out and exposed to let it dry.

He studied it for such a long while that Yusuf turned his head to find where Nico’s gaze and thoughts had wandered.

At times, Nicolò believed with his entire being they shared thoughts.

“From whence we came” He murmured, “And what we shall be.”

“Crafted in agony.” Nicolò added along, “Brought in violence, birthed in blood.”

Yusuf turned, and in doing so, he turned Nicolò’s gaze back to himself, fingers against Nicolò’s neck, his pulse, some strands of hair between them. Silken from their most recent washing.

This kiss, a sigh, the waves calming beyond. The fire dimming and the morning hovering.

**Author's Note:**

> This came to me as the title first, the opening paragraph second, and utterly no plot as I wrote. Or rather, I think the plot developed as I wrote. 
> 
> Self beta'd. As always, thank you so much for reading and I can be found on [Tumblr](https://coffeebeannate.tumblr.com/) should that be your taste.


End file.
